How to Use Triads from the CAGED System (Stop Sounding Muddy)

This lesson picks back up where we left off with the CAGED system.

Today we’re talking about the triads we pull out of the CAGED shapes, and what we can actually do with them.

Because here’s the thing that always happens.. people talk about pulling the triads out of these chords, and we’re left wondering, okay, what am I supposed to do with those?

There are many things we can do with them. We’ll cover a snippet of it here, enough to give you something real to practice this week.

The chord progression we’re using

We’re going to stick with the same progression from last time so it all ties together. E minor, G, D, A.

Last time we talked about pulling the CAGED chords out and keeping them within a certain section of the neck. We used:

• E minor as the A minor shaped E minor chord
• The C shaped G chord (say that three times fast)
• The G shaped D chord
• The C shaped A chord

All of those sit together in the same area of the neck. That’s the whole point of doing it this way. You’re not jumping around, you’re working one neighborhood.

What counts as a triad, and what doesn’t

Triads can be found anytime there’s a one, a three and a five right after one another.

It doesn’t matter which one’s on the bottom. That just means it’s an inversion, but it’s still a triad.

Now take the bottom three strings of that E minor in the A minor shape. That’s a one, a five and a one.

That’s a dyad, not a triad. There’s no third in there.

I probably wouldn’t target that. It doesn’t have enough melodic quality. It’s kind of a chord, but it’s not a full chord. You could argue one way or the other about it, but that’s not what we’re here for.

The third is the note doing the work. It’s the only one of the three that tells your ear major or minor. Root says which chord. Fifth says nothing much at all. The third is the whole message.

Finding the triad inside each shape

E minor, A minor shape. Up at the top, on the E, B and G strings.

e|--7---  fifth
B|--8---  minor third
G|--9---  root

Ring finger on the 9th fret of the G string is your root. Middle finger on the 8th fret of the B string is your minor third. Index on the 7th fret of the high E is the fifth. That’s the triad we’re going to use here.

G, C shape. The wonderful thing about the C shape is that it’s almost entirely made up of triads. There are two in there to choose from.

Down in the bass you’ve got the one on the A string, the third on the D string, and the fifth on the G string. That’s a triad.

Up at the top, where we steal that D shape from, we’re just missing the root note back here. We have a five, a one and a three, which makes it a second inversion. That’s the one we want to hang on to.

e|--7---  third
B|--8---  root
G|--7---  fifth

D, G shape. At the very base of it, the 10th fret of the low E string is my one. My third is on the 9th fret of the A string, and my fifth is on the 7th fret of the D string.

D|--7---  fifth
A|--9---  third
E|--10--  root

I’ve also got a triad on this back wall here, and that’s literally just barring the 7th fret of the D, G and B strings.

B|--7---  third
G|--7---  root
D|--7---  fifth

That’s the fifth, the one and the third. Another second inversion, and that’s probably the one I’d take.

A, C shape. Same concept as the C shaped G we just did. All of your triads sit in the same relative spots inside the shape. Once you’ve found them in one C shape you’ve found them in every C shape, anywhere on the neck, in any key.

That’s the payoff of doing this by shape instead of by note.

When a dyad is actually fine

On that D shape there’s a dyad up at the top worth talking about. It’s a one, a third and a one.

e|--10--  root
B|--7---  third
G|--7---  root

Since it has the third in it, that’s an okay dyad.

If it had just the fifth in it, it doesn’t have the same melodic quality that a one and a three does. There’s just enough in a one and a three to convey that it’s a major or a minor chord, where those five chords can’t. And it’s literally just because they don’t have the third in them.

So on this one I might cycle back and forth between that back wall triad and this dyad up top. Both work.

Why you’d bother: two guitars, two registers

Here’s where this stops being an exercise and starts being useful.

This is a great way to approach playing along to a backing track, or playing with a buddy who’s down there doing the open position chords.

You get to play along with them without both of you sitting in the same register. So it doesn’t sound muddy. It sounds like there are two guitars in the room.

I brought my loop pedal for this. Lay down E minor, G, D, A as full chords, then play your triads over the top.

Play the full CAGED chords over it first and it’s fine, nothing special. Then arpeggiate just the triads and you’ll hear immediately what it does. It’s clear. It’s in a different register, so it has its own space.

That last triad I pull out is the one from the E shaped A chord, and that’s middle finger, pinky, index finger. From that shape it’s the fifth, the root and the third. Another second inversion, but it sounds really nice after the D. It’s got a nice resolve to it.

Now do the whole thing somewhere else

We can also do this in other locations, and once you’re familiar with your CAGED shapes and where those triads specifically are, this is something you can do very quickly.

The other spot we used last time takes the same four chords from about the 3rd fret to the 7th fret.

• E minor as the D minor shape
• G as the E shaped bar chord
• D as the C shape, which really is just the extension of your regular open D chord. This is the rest of it
• A as the G shaped A, which is just like the D. It’s the extension of the regular open A chord

Now pull the triads out of that area.

The D minor shape is already the triad. That’s the fifth, the root and the third, right up at the very top. Nothing to do.

From the E shaped G, take the top three strings:

e|--3---  root
B|--3---  fifth
G|--4---  third

That’s the 3rd fret of the high E, the 3rd fret of the B, and the 4th fret of the G string.

And then ipso facto, it’s just the D shape for the D and for the A.

The thing that happens when you get there

Here’s why that second position is worth playing, beyond just knowing another spot.

Because those last two are unisons, you get to hear exactly why it’s nice not to play in tandem with your other guitar player, in the same harmonic register.

Run through E minor, G, and then D. As soon as you get to that D and the A, it’s the same shape in the same place. And if you’re not arpeggiating it, meaning picking through those notes one at a time, it really just blends in together and disappears.

So when you have two guitar players playing the same exact chords, one of you needs to do something different.

I know a lot of people tend to go for bar chords. E minor, G, D. And that’s fine.

But those bar chords, especially down in the bass, are a one, five, one. There’s no harmonic quality down at the base of those notes. It’s really all at the top.

So if that’s the case, just use the top. Use the top of those.

Sounds so much better than the bar chords. Especially over somebody else playing, or if you’ve got a loop going, or whatever. And you can hear how it harmonizes really well.

Why this matters for your lead playing

The wonderful thing about CAGED, and chords in general, is that these are what we call chord tones. Chord tones, because they’re the tones that make the chord.

They also happen to be the excellent notes to pull out when you’re playing lead, to let everybody know you’re playing along with the chord.

We never want to be playing just scales up and down, guessing what notes we’re playing. It sounds a lot better when we target the notes of each chord as it passes by. In doing so, it makes everything that much more musical.

CAGED is a really great road map for doing that, and especially for pulling out these triads.

Your practice this week

Run through your CAGED shapes. There are only five, so this shouldn’t be that difficult.

And if it does seem that difficult, just take your time with it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you’re not going to learn how to play guitar in a day either.

Here’s the order I’d go in:

1. Take one CAGED chord and dissect it. Remember it’s all ones, threes and fives. Find out where those are
2. Take note of where the dyads are, the ones and the fives, and where they link up. That’s a one, five, one. That’s not a triad
3. Find all your triads in that shape
4. Move to the next CAGED shape and do it again
5. Get comfortable using them over a chord progression

For the progression, there are plenty on YouTube, or you can make your own. Grab a loop pedal, or honestly just use the camera on your phone and record yourself playing the chords, then play the triads back over it.

Find a different triad for each chord. If you’ve got a four chord song like we just did, there are at least five places to find a triad for each one, because there are five CAGED shapes.

That’s twenty triads in a four chord song. That’s a week of practice right there.

Do that and you’re going to start increasing your fretboard fluency and getting properly accustomed to finding these shapes.

If you’ve got questions, come find us in the community.